OL David Diehl - 12/5

OL David Diehl on must win games

Q: Are these must-win games the specialty for this New York Giants football team? A: Obviously we’ve been in this situation before, so people are always going to say that. Did we want to put ourselves in this position? No, absolutely not. Last week was an opportunity that we lost and we can never get back, but the only way to bounce back from it is this Sunday. To come out and play this game the best we can, play smart football and come away with a win. Keep building from here. We believe in one another. We believe in the guys in this locker room. When we play our game and we’re at our top, we think that nobody can stop us. I think we’ve displayed that this year; it’s all about consistently doing it, though.

Q: How hard was it to be on the sideline? A: You never want to do that. I played in so many games; you never want to sit back and be a spectator and doing that stuff. Like I said last week, coming back for the last practice, Sean (Locklear) earned his right to start, he deserved to start. It’s a role that I’ll never get used to. When your opportunity comes back, you come back, and you come back strong. Most importantly, you play as best as you can to secure it.

Q: How do you feel physically after last game? A: Fine.

Q: This team has had your number the last couple times: A: Yeah. Obviously, number one, you’re playing them at home. We haven’t played them at home in awhile. To go there, it’s a tough place to play when you go out there and play in the Superdome. They play extremely well at home, so it’s nice to, number one, have home field advantage; playing them here, in our house. Most importantly, we need to feed off the energy of the crowd and give them something to cheer about.

Q: Does the Saints defense remind you of Steve Spagnuolo’s from back in the days when he was here? A: Yeah. A zebra doesn’t change its stripes. There’s different wrinkles, there’s different personnel and stuff like that, but you see an aggressive defense that wants to pressure. They want to get their safeties down involved and get them to pressure the quarterback. They’ll show two from one side and then bring them from the other. You see a defense that’s aggressive that wants to get after the quarterback and apply pressure.

Q: Was last game out of character with the number of penalties? A: Yeah, unfortunately, what you put on film is what you were that game. We are a disciplined football team. There’s a reason that we have the least amount of penalties in the NFC East and the least amount of sacks in the NFL. You can see the difference that it played in the game. If you get those penalties on first and second down, you’re putting yourself in first-and-20, second-and-20 situations where, even if you get 10 yards, you’re still putting yourself at third-and-long distances which are, on the road, an advantage for the defense to be able to be aggressive, do different things. For us as a football team, that’s how we’ve won games; being so fundamentally sound and disciplined. For us, we need to get back to us playing consistent football like we know we’re capable of. We have the guys in this locker room, we believe in one another and I know this: we’re working extremely hard and we’re going to be ready to go and play our best football Sunday.